Although the receiving tray of the present invention may be utilized with various types of equipment, for purposes of this disclosure it will be described as used with a diazotype copying machine for producing prints or copies of original documents to be copied. For example, such copying machines are normally used for producing white prints from drawings or the like prepared on translucent material.
In the operation of such equipment, the original to be copied is fed in superposed relation with a sensitized copy sheet into an exposure unit of the copying machine. After exposure, the original and the copy sheet are discharged from the machine, separated from each other, and the copy sheet bearing a latent image is fed through a developer unit of the machine to produce a visible image on the copy sheet. The finished print is discharged from the machine to a print receiving tray.
Conventionally, drawing or tracing material for preparing original drawings is provided in various standard sizes, and the copy sheets for making prints from the drawings are provided in sizes corresponding to the size of the drawings. In other instances, the copy material is fed from a roll supply and is cut to a size or length corresponding to the size of the original during the feeding of the copy material and the original to the exposure unit. In either case, the size of the prints varies as determined by the size of the originals being copied.
Normally, the prints exiting from the copying machine are received by a shelf or the like in a random fashion for subsequent retrieval by the machine operator. While such a shelf could be arranged to stack and register prints of a single predetermined length, it would not provide for stacking and registering the lead ends of prints of different predetermined lengths. Therefore, the receiving of prints of various lengths by the shelf results in a disarrayed stack requiring further manipulation by the machine operator in order to arrange the prints in a neat and orderly fashion and in registered alignment.